


half-shapes in the night

by adnauseam



Category: The Long Walk - Richard Bachman
Genre: Haunting, Post-Canon, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 06:59:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17638004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adnauseam/pseuds/adnauseam
Summary: A conversation, afterwards.





	half-shapes in the night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PositivelyVexed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PositivelyVexed/gifts).



 

He woke in the night very quickly. Silently. There was nothing there. There was nothing there.

And yet—

The dark was pressing into his eyeballs, but as it began to drop away and he started to make out pale half-shapes, he could see with a convulsive beat of his heart that there was something there. Somebody there.

“Oh, hello, Garraty,” McVries said.

He didn’t react. For one long moment he froze, cold creeping through his blood. He did not breathe.

“I wouldn’t like to think you’d forgotten me,” McVries said. He wasn’t smiling, but his pose was casual, intensely so, leaning against the desk with his head tilted back a little.

“You’re not alive,” Ray said. “You’re not.” His heart was thumping madly in his throat, his stomach, lower.

“Am I not?” McVries crossed his arms and looked Ray over. His gaze was—gentle.

Silence. Ray breathed in. Now that he was fully awake and used to the dark, he could make out the faint strips of moonlight slithering through the blinds.

McVries laughed, sudden and loud in the close dark. “So you won, eh?”

Ray nodded once, a convulsive, sharp motion.

McVries was watching him. His skin was pale and soft. He looked like he could fall backwards into the night and be swallowed, like his skin could be melted away. He was indistinct at the edges. McVries was watching him, still.

Ray breathed out shallowly. “I’m sorry,” he said. His voice was painful in his throat, raspy. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sure you are.”

“McVries,” Ray said. “Pete.” He didn’t know what to say.

Pete pushed himself slowly upright. There was a glint in his eyes and his arms were still crossed; he looked so real standing in the dark there that Ray could almost let himself believe that he was really there, that he had come back, that he wasn’t—

Pete smiled, slanted, and said: “I saw you last night. Were you thinking of me?”

Ray sat up. His jaw was firming, defensive, but the silence grew and grew and still he did not say anything. And still he did not say anything.

“Ha.” Pete moved forward, heavy on the floorboards but noiseless. Silent. His hair was dark against his skin.

This was it. There was no going back from this. Pete was coming closer. Closer.

“Will you be here in the morning,” Ray asked. It was humiliating but he couldn’t not. He couldn’t.

“No,” Pete said.

 

 


End file.
